Retiree diagnosed with ringbone. Pull shoes or not?

[ljc]

My 24-year old semi-retired (now fully retired) Welsh pony was recently diagnosed with low ringbone. We’ve been dealing fairly successfully with navicular issues for the last four years but when osphos stopped working new xrays showed ringbone. He lives here at home with three other horses and he can remain a pasture pet for the rest of his life. He also has Cushings and is on two mags of Prascend daily.

Both my vet and farrier have suggested the possibility of pulling his front shoes. They both think that’s a viable option, given we’ve tried so many different shoes, pads, wedges, etc over the years. He’s currently wearing aluminum shoes that are set slightly back to help with break over and three degree wedge pads. We tried natural balance shoes and they made things worse.

He’s an ex-show pony who has worn shoes with pads his whole life. I’ve had barefoot horse before and have no problem with the concept, other than recognizing he’ll need to wear boots of some sort if I take him for hand walks around the neighborhood or when he gets turned out. He lives in a stall with a 1/4 acre dry lot paddock and gets turned out (with a grazing muzzle) every day for a few hours.

So, two questions. First, has anyone had good luck with pulling shoes on a horse with ringbone? Second,I’d appreciate suggestions for boots that are easy to put on that he can wear when needed.

[Bluey]

@ljc

My 24-year old semi-retired (now fully retired) Welsh pony was recently diagnosed with low ringbone. We’ve been dealing fairly successfully with navicular issues for the last four years but when osphos stopped working new xrays showed ringbone. He lives here at home with three other horses and he can remain a pasture pet for the rest of his life. He also has Cushings and is on two mags of Prascend daily.

Both my vet and farrier have suggested the possibility of pulling his front shoes. They both think that’s a viable option, given we’ve tried so many different shoes, pads, wedges, etc over the years. He’s currently wearing aluminum shoes that are set slightly back to help with break over and three degree wedge pads. We tried natural balance shoes and they made things worse.

He’s an ex-show pony who has worn shoes with pads his whole life. I’ve had barefoot horse before and have no problem with the concept, other than recognizing he’ll need to wear boots of some sort if I take him for hand walks around the neighborhood or when he gets turned out. He lives in a stall with a 1/4 acre dry lot paddock and gets turned out (with a grazing muzzle) every day for a few hours.

So, two questions. First, has anyone had good luck with pulling shoes on a horse with ringbone? Second,I’d appreciate suggestions for boots that are easy to put on that he can wear when needed.

Our horse retired with ringbone never did need shoes, before or after, he had great black strong flexible hooves and was only sore and eventually terminally lame on the joint the ringbone affected, supposedly from a pasture misstep, as per the vet.

Our Cushing’s horse didn’t have ringbone and was barefoot until he was 19, then mincing his steps and once shod in front, again his happy, sound self.
Even with Cushings under good control, as time passes, hoof quality may diminish and horses may get ouchy.

With any horse, you can try going barefoot and many will be fine, but if not, be kind to the horse and give him whatever support he may need all the time, not just when you are there and see him gimping along and decide to put boots on him, as I have seen plenty do time and again, hoping he will get used to barefoot, but they never really do.

Maybe you will be lucky and he can be barefoot just fine, no harm in trying.

[Highflyer1]

If you are somewhere that the ground gets frozen/hard in winter, I wouldn’t recommend pulling shoes now. But the horse I had with ringbone was barefoot for the last ten years of her life and did great.

[ljc]

I’m in CA. No frozen ground here (usually) and due to the rain we normally get, this is the ideal time to pull shoes because the ground is softer.

[S1969]

Why has the pony been in shoes its whole life? If for corrective reasons, then I would worry that pulling shoes now would cause new issues.

That said - go ahead an try it. If the pony is retired and both your vet and farrier support the idea - see what happens. Be prepared to use boots if necessary, but if you’re not dealing with hard, frozen ground and the pony is not in work, you might not need them. Just be watching for signs of discomfort.

[fourfillies]

I’d definitely give it a try. My retiree with “posterior foot issues” and low ringbone later in life has done really well barefoot.

[mvp]

You could pull the shoes… but how much work/pain control is being done by those 3-degree wedge pads? That’s a very tall pad, so I’d think carefully with my farrier about taking shoes off, for the ringbone but leaving them on for the pads and how that helps the navicular.

Bless you for being willing to do so much to keep this pony sound-ish and entertained. I had a horse who succumbed to the effects of ringbone. As a vet set to me at the beginnning “the pastern is a very unforgiving joint.”

[walkinthewalk]

My now 26 yr old TWH seriously foundered some years back. While he is in IR remission, he developed Cushings in 2019. He has been x-rayed every couple of years; last year’s x-rays showed Low Ringbone, so similar circumstances to your pony.

He was already in composite shoes with full pads and DIM under the pads as palliative care for the damage from founder. It has been very successful for his initial problem, BUT of interest to you might be the reduction in concussion the composite shoes offer. He is on six acres and never seems to have an off day as far as his front hooves are concerned; he has other issues that can slow him down.

My point is to at least consider composite shoes with flexible plastic pads and DIM material underneath - it could go a long way in giving your pony additional comfort:)

[mfglickman]

What is the DIM material? I have an early 20’s large pony, in wide webs and 2 degree pads up front (retired but more comfortable in shoes). She has been off and on terribly lame up front the past 6 weeks. Was treated for EPM in summer and chronic Lyme in September. She’ll seem ok one day then dead lame the next, a little ice and bute and she’s fine in 24 hours, only to be lame again 3-4 days later. Have Lyme bloodwork out again; doesn’t look like laminitis (stance is normal she’s just hesitant to walk, it’s on one side - usually right but when the vet came it was clearly left- , and sometimes there’s a little heat sometimes not, no bounding pulses).

Sorry for hijacking and I will do a separate post, just curious about the DIM.

[quietann]

DIM is Dental Impression Material. My mare has had it in the past, under her pads. It is more giving than pour-in pads, which she could not tolerate. The DIM my farrier uses has a bit of copper sulfate mixed in to help control sole fungus.

[walkinthewalk]

@mfglickman my farrier uses Glu-U ShuFil with the green lid.

https://www.stockhoffsonline.com/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=shufil&PN=Glu-U-Shufill-Impression-Material.html#SID=667

She generously covers the entire sole, frog, and up the central sulci. She also mixes copper sulfate crystals into the ShuFil before spreading it across the soles.

She resets my horse every five weeks. I THINK she gets 5-6 resets out of one set of tubs? I buy everything and keep it here - you’d think I would remember🤯

This ugly looking thing is the ShuFil after it’s been protecting the hoof for five weeks, lol. The purple is Thrush Buster that I pour into the central sulci, when the ShuFil starts to fall away from it.

Whatever brand of DIM is used, don’t let the farrier be cheap about covering the entire sole and make sure he/she liberally covers the central sulci so it lasts longer.

P.S. keep this stuff away from the dogs. My farrier knows someone whose dog ate the ShuFil, it didn’t digest, and the result was a nice sized vet bill. The dog lived but it was not cheap to save it.

[Xanthoria]

I’m in CA too and over the years what I found was in winter the ground is wet and soft. And so are the hooves. But the rocks stay hard. So those soft hooves find the rocks extra painful.

I’ve had better success transitioning dry, hard summer hooves. Including my old low ringbone horse who did 8 years of retirement barefoot.

[ljc]

Good point. But the barefoot transition helped?

[Xanthoria]

Well he was retired but he did well on pasture for 8 years barefoot.

[Railbird]

My old man with major ringbone and related issues did a lot better barefoot, but he had the tendency to get pretty high and contracted in the heel, versus needing a wedge, so possibly a different scenario. I can say with certainty that when we xrayed the feet and adjusted the shoeing to match the xrays he went from pretty lame to so crippled that I was worried I would have to put him down, so my data point of 1 is that horses with arthritis in that area don’t read the books about what their feet should look like.

[Bluey]

@Railbird

My old man with major ringbone and related issues did a lot better barefoot, but he had the tendency to get pretty high and contracted in the heel, versus needing a wedge, so possibly a different scenario. I can say with certainty that when we xrayed the feet and adjusted the shoeing to match the xrays he went from pretty lame to so crippled that I was worried I would have to put him down, so my data point of 1 is that horses with arthritis in that area don’t read the books about what their feet should look like.

Maybe his foot was contracting from not being sufficiently weight bearing from pain?
That can be a very slow process, you don’t see it until is very obvious and then is hard to control without causing other issues.

We had a 10 year old horse with that problem when he broke a wing of the coffin bone.

You are right, each horse is a new adventure in how things work and don’t.